Rawlings’ June 4 Gained Massive Support

THE ASSSOCIATE Executive Director of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Dr. Baffour Agyeman-Duah, has claimed that the bloody uprising of June 4, 1979, that ushered in the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) gained massive popular support in Ghana.

He observed that AFRC gained support particularly when it declared as its primary objective, a “house-cleaning exercise” within the military before completing the process began by SMC II, to restore civilian rule by the end of September 1979.

Dr. Agyeman-Duah made the statement in his special research book that was launched at the conference room of the CDD in Accra.

The 39-page book, authored by Dr. Baffour Agyeman-Duah, is entitled “Civil-Military Relations in Ghana’s Fourth Republic”.

Dr. Agyeman-Duah, however, observed that the successful coup on December 31, 1981, which is the second coming of Rawlings, betrayed the principle upon which his “first-coming” was widely acclaimed: to end military interventions in politics.

According to him, it was on this basis that most of Rawlings’ June 4 collaborators and admirers felt deceived and broke camp when he resurfaced at the head of yet another coup.

He observed that because of popular sentiments against military rule and Rawlings’ own anti-coup rhetorics in 1979, Rawlings endeavoured to make the PNDC less military in outlook and insisted that the regime was a “people’s government.

He noted that membership of the Council and Ministers of State (PNDC Secretaries) were predominantly civilian and unlike in the past, few soldiers were deplored at public institutions.

Dr. Agyeman-Duah observed in his book that these measures were, however, a mere window, dressing as the guns still ruled.

He said the efforts to radicalize the military institution was unsuccessful, largely because of strenuous objections by civil society groups and the more professionally minded officer corps.